Still Waters Run Deep
by SecretLife40
Summary: He was different from everybody else that I knew and I wondered if that would be better.  I had to ask myself if I wanted to keep doing the same thing, or risk what I knew was easy to test the waters. B/E au ooc ah
1. Chapter 1

Twilight belongs to Stephenie Meyer

This is an Edward / Bella story, we'll get there, perhaps it'll be a bit of a slow ride...

Thank you isn't a strong enough word to PinkIndeed who is always a positive force, even when she's knitting, her encouragement is beyond anything I could ask for! Check out her story, Beautiful Girl 'Cailin Alainn'!

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Chapter One

I'd lost my virginity to Emmett McCarty halfway through my sophomore year. I wasn't his first, but that was okay. I mean I was surprised we had even started going out together in the first place. Everyone was surprised. Precious Blood High School was a small enough community that everyone knew who liked who, but still, it kinda hurt. I mean, I'm not unfortunate looking, I get decent grades, participate in school activities, get invited to some of the cooler parties, and still, I was looked at like the charity date.

But Emmett told me everybody else was bent and didn't see me for the beauty that I was. I mean shit, how can any girl not fall for a line like that, even if it was cheesy and maybe a little backhanded. Anyway, I fell for it, every inch of that line, I fell for it, each and every time.

I fell for it after I caught Emmett behind the bleachers with Jessica Stanley. And I fell for it again when I caught him with Katie Marshall in the rumpus room bathroom at that one party. But each time, he told me he loved me and he was sorry, he just couldn't help himself, and each time he screwed around on me, it made him realize how good I was. He told me I was his number one beauty, that I understood him. He even cried once when I told him I was through with him lying and cheating. I took him back that time too.

What can I say? I mean, I watched when Charlie cheated on Renee and when Renee revenge cheated on Charlie. They didn't know I knew, but honestly, lame excuses about working late? Come on, Charlie's been a desk sergeant for years who doesn't ever work past the end of his shift, he claimed it was a union thing. And Renee, she taught pre-school, really, how much extra work does _that_ take at 8:00 o'clock at night? But they always went back to each other, so I guess that's all I knew. Cheat, apologize, cheat. Lather, rinse, repeat.

But it was when that new girl started at Precious Blood that I knew I was a goner. Emmett, along with most of the other guys in school, had spent the better part of the first day adjusting their pants every time she swung her hips past them. Fucking lemmings. Brown hair, brown eyes and boobs that were just a handful couldn't compete with blond hair, blue eyes and curves that looked like bucolic country hills.

Then she started sitting at our lunch table. Emmett suddenly didn't want me feeding him the apple slices that I always used to feed him. He still ate the lunch I fucking packed for him though. She started sitting at the end of the table, but by the end of the second week she was sitting directly across from Emmett. My descent into the ex girlfriend was going faster than I'd expected, I thought I could at least ride this out until Homecoming. By this pace it looked like I'd barely clear the season opener.

I called Alice. She didn't go to school with me, her parents let her enroll in public school when she argued Catholic school didn't fund the arts enough. Her parents must really be thick, had they not taken a look at the last time dance, music and art classes had gotten a budget increase? Certainly not in our lifetime, or probably our parents' lifetimes either.

Alice told me I needed to stand up for myself, to finally kick Emmett to the curb, and that I didn't need to settle for him.

I argued that outside of all of bravado and testosterone, he was really sweet. He never embarrassed me by making a big deal about my birthday, almost always picked me up for school, cleaned off my parents' cars when it snowed, brought me tissue with the lotion in it when I had a cold, and would pick me up and spin me around, right on the field, after every game he won. That was the best when he did that, I felt it let everyone know, even the girls who he cheated on me with, that I was his first choice.

Alice reminded me of all the times he cheated on me, to list those events in the _Con_ column. But after numerous lists and bullet points and arguments _For_ and _Against_, Alice agreed with me, to an extent. I was gonna stay with Emmett until he was forced to break up with me. Alice settled on this because she knew how much Emmett hated conflict and confrontation, I did it in hopes he'd realize I was the one for him and he really did need me.

In the end though, we were both proven wrong. Emmet broke up with me, right in front of my locker before first period and we weren't even a month into school. He told me I was a great girl, but he'd met someone else and he wished me best of luck, like I was a fucking game show contestant. It was this moment when I finally found my voice.

Before he had finished his plastic farewell, I had raised my hand and drew it back and I didn't even know what happened but I slapped him so hard across his face, dimples and all, that his head rolled to the side by the sheer force of my being fed up.

"Emmett McCarty, you're a coward and a liar, you don't deserve someone like me," and I took my girl power ass and went into my first class with my head held high.

He doesn't need to define me, I thought to myself, or at least, I hoped.

Surely there had to be someone out there who was right for me and I was right for them.

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If anyone is coming over from my other story; Bee, Like Sting, I'm still writing it, I just needed a break from all of the inappropriateness...

I have the second chapter in the works, if I get some interest to this chapter I'll keep on posting.


	2. Chapter 2

Twilight belongs to Stephenie Meyer.

This chap is continuing with laying the groundwork and introductions, if I keep rolling with this story, chapters should be 3k – 5k.

To PinkIndeed, if I were one of those folks who compare people to stuff, I would say she's the Bruno Kirby to my baby fish mouth. But since I'm not, I'll just say she puts up with a lot of my yammering and for that, I am extremely grateful.

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Chapter Two

"And I slapped him," I said while crunching through the fallen leaves on the sidewalk. I had just finished telling Alice about my events before first period and about Emmett breaking up with me.

"Wow, for real? I can't believe you did that," Alice said, I noted her incredulity.

"I know, I wasn't proud of it," I said, and I wasn't. My dad had worked the police desk long enough to know men have domestic abuse against them too, it's just that most times the guys are too embarrassed to file charges and I was ashamed that I resorted to violence because of my temper.

"Whole chickens are on sale," Alice said, changing the subject while looking at nothing in particular across the street.

"Crap, those things are just disgusting. I'm surprised Mr. Newton didn't put fresh corn on sale too."

Alice let out an absent minded laugh. Newton's Happy Foods, where we worked, had to be a front for something, we were both convinced of it. It was so old school that they had just gotten UPC scanners a couple years earlier, but yet it had four full time butchers and the store was only six aisles big, how the place stayed in business made no sense. And Mr. Newton had a slightly sadistic side to him too, he always put disgusting and slimy whole chickens on sale along with corn on the cob, it was foul, this hairy-like mess of corn silk mixed with chicken blood. Last time those two were on sale, Alice declared herself a vegan, I was surprised she even still worked at there.

"Hey, does Mike know about you and Emmett?" Alice turned and asked me suddenly.

"I imagine everyone knows, or at least everyone in our class," I replied, shrugging my shoulder. I hadn't given it much thought, lunch at our regular table was fairly normal but _she_ and Emmett weren't there. No surprise. And of all people, Jessica Stanley had been nice to me, or at least, nice to my face, she probably was making fun of me that I couldn't keep a man satisfied. I happen to know as a fact that after Emmett fucked Jess, I had some of the best sex ever, Emmett whispered to me that I was better than anyone, he didn't know why he would ever doubt that, and Jess was so 'lame it was like he was fucking a damp dishrag.' In hindsight, it was totally fucked up that Emmett compared his cheating fuck to my performance, but at the time, I thought that Emmett loved me best. I was the best girl he loved and he would always come back to me.

And that's when it started to creep in, the rise of tears threatening to spill over from my bottom eyelids. Somehow I had managed to take the adrenalin rush from the slap, and parlay it into a whole day of being removed from the situation, but all of that bluster and show, disappeared when I realized I wouldn't have Emmett anymore. No more notes passed in our shared classes, not more lunches spent kissing and groping in that back stairwell that no one ever used, no more nights he would sneak into that ill-placed window in my bedroom. Those nights were the best. Emmett would leave out that window and go down the back stairs and walk around the block to pick me up for school, my parents none the wiser, and thought Emmett was the perfect gentleman.

Alice stopped and looked at me before launching into action.

"Come here, sweetie, come on, it'll be okay," Alice had me in a tight hug patting me on the back of my head.

"What if Emmett was my high water mark? What if he was my soul mate but I'm not his? What if I spend the rest of my life," and here the tears made their descent down my cheeks, "and never find what I had with Emmett?" I took a shuddering gasp of air, my emotions warring inside. I wanted to cry and feel sorry for myself mixed with wanting to punch something too. Like maybe Emmett's throat. Ugh, now I was contradicting myself.

"Aw, come on baby, it's okay, let it out," if I wasn't so preoccupied in feeling sorry for myself I would have realized that Alice was better at this comforting stuff than I would have ever given her credit for. "Do you want me to tell Mr. Newton you had to go home?"

I took a few minutes, pulling back from Alice and wiping my eyes and thanking the fact that I had not worn mascara; red rimmed eyes were one thing, but black tracks running down my cheeks were hard to hide. I took several breaths and tried to get my breathing under control.

"No, I'll be all right. Besides, I don't want Mike to know anything, it's just, I don't know, I guess I'm not sure whose side he's gonna be on," Mike was a kicker on the football team. So while it was most likely bros before hos, what Emmett might not have counted on was the fact that Mike had spent the past year and a half hitting on me every time I walked through the door of his family's store.

Alice eyed me, inspecting my appearance and must have deemed me passable, she took my sleeve and led me to work.

Before we walked through the back entrance she gave me one last chance to back out.

"No, it'll be fine, anyway, I should do this to keep my mind off things."

"Okay, as long as you're sure?" She double checked.

"Yup, I'm sure, let's do this."

Alice and I changed into our smocks, both cursing the unflattering uniform and made our way to the checkout area.

"Okay, today's topic?" Alice asked, most likely trying to keep things normal and not risking me having an embarrassing outburst again.

"It's your call."

"Let's compare customer type."

This was one of Alice's favorite work pastimes. We had different games depending on our mood. Sometimes we would count how many time guys came in to buy a box of Tampax, or how often someone would grab a cucumber or zucchini or squash as if it were a cock, that was my favorite since I would have to choke back a laugh every time, or this game, Alice's pigeon hole game. For this activity, we had four categories for the men that would pass through our checkout lines: Arty; Business; Preppy and Possibly Gay. It stood that Alice would get the majority of the Arty and Possibly Gay guys, while I got the other two, Business and Preppy. Alice attributed it to her non-Gap outfits and her Audrey Hepburn on speed type hair, while I was wholesome and looked like I got good grades. I didn't necessarily disagree with her. Our theory was, a guy didn't choose the line to stand in based on how many people were in it, but based it on the checkout girl's looks. Women based it purely on time spent in line. Or if they had coupons that were expired then it was who looked like the biggest pushover, I usually got all of those women.

"Hey, Bella, wasn't sure you'd be in today," Mike commented when he came in after practice about an hour after Alice and I had been there.

"Why Mike?" I was trying to reclaim my buoyancy from earlier in the day.

"Oh, I, uh, I just thought, with uh, you and today, and all," he trailed off, obviously embarrassed.

"Because of Emmett?" I shrugged, this might be considered a tragic downfall, but I had a certain sense of pride, I wasn't going to let Mike Newton report back to Emmett that I had been weepy and broken. "It's not that big of a deal," if Mike believed what I had just said, he really did deserve to be in the 50th percentile for his SAT scores. I mean, we went out for over a year and a half, how could it not affect me? He dumped me like spoiled milk, only more insultingly, it was more like milk he enjoyed then left two swallows at the bottom of the carton and let it spoil since it wasn't even enough to cover a bowl of cereal.

"Okay, well, uh, that's good, I just, I guess I wasn't sure how you were, uh, gonna feel and all, you know?"

I shook my head clear the fog of my thoughts drifting and tried to focus on the fact that Mike was still there and talking to me.

"I feel fine Mike, thanks for asking though. Uh, listen I gotta pay attention here," I tipped my head behind me to indicate I was on the clock and working. Mike got it, waved and went back to the stockroom.

"Yikes, he's smooth," Alice joked.

"Yeah, he's not so bad, I mean he coulda ignored me and been all Team Emmett and shit," I commented then realized an old lady Tallan was in line and had just tsk-ed me for swearing.

"Sorry Mrs. Tallan," then before I could stop myself I added, "my boyfriend broke up with me today." Oh, for shit's sake, how lame, I'm sharing personal information with a 75 year old woman.

"Oh, dear, I'm sorry, but ring up my chickens and corn or I'm gonna miss my bus."

And time marches on.

At 8:55, Alice and I have almost finished our shifts. The score is as follows:

Alice

Arty guy: 16

Business guy: 4

Preppy guy: 1

Possibly Gay guy: 3

Bella

Arty guy: 8

Business guy: 12

Preppy guy: 9

Possibly Gay guy: 2

The rest were women and we didn't count old men 'cause they all just looked old to us.

I was just about to pull my drawer to count it out when some guy with a hood on walked into my line. He had a package of Ho-Hos, a bottle of Coke and two of those 5-hour energy drinks. Apparently he wanted to stay awake. I was going to make a joke but the hood freaked me out. Alice and I were the only ones up front, Mike and his dad were in back or something, I had a passing fear that this guy was going to pull a gun out and rob me. I rang up his items and was about to tell him he owed $9.40 when he spoke.

"Pack of Parliament Lights," and I know I'm supposed to check IDs and call Mr. Newton to the front to hand the cigarettes over since I'm not 18, but I was halfway to post traumatic stress counseling thinking this guy was going to rob and shoot me that I just reached up to the rack next to me and gently set them on the counter in front of the guy, it was like I was handling explosives and wanted to back away slowly.

"Um, that's $18.46, please," hopefully if I act polite this guy won't kill Alice or I for the 86 some odd dollars in my register.

He handed me a $20 and I turned to give him his change, and noticed my hand was shaking slightly.

He pocketed the money and was turning to walk out, I was taking a sharp inhale of air trying to get my heart to return to a less dangerous beat.

"Easy princess, I won't bite," I could have sworn he said. Sworn it. But then again, maybe not. It was barely above a whisper.

He was walking out of the store and I was questioning if I heard him say something or maybe I misunderstood what he said or he coulda just been on the phone. I brought my eyes up and watched his approach to the automatic door, I noticed on the back of his hoodie was a dark patch with white stitching of a turntable.

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**A/N** Mmm, who do you think Mr. Two Turntables and a Microphone could be? Give it a bit, we'll find out…

Reviews make me write quicker, okay, and not quote Beck…


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